<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/images/photos/uncategorized/2009/04/21/weddingsofthe_times.jpg)\n\nWhen the newspapers are finally defeated by the computers, we will lose not only an important source of very flammable material that stains our fingers but also three unique human emotions:\n\nFirst, the reassuring calm of the Funny Pages. (It comforts me to know that Dagwood Bumstead is immortal and that no one looks at him funny just because he wears clothes from the &amp;amp;#x2019;30s and has deformed hair. I wonder if he is a Highlander.)\n\nSecond, the sheer awful panic of the Obituaries. (But wait! No one is really immortal. All of these people died. This is terrible! This is as bad as reading &amp;amp;#x201C;For Better or For Worse,&amp;amp;#x201D; the Canadian comic strip in which everyone ages in real time and then their dog dies.)\n\nAnd finally, the happy two minutes of hate we call the Wedding Pages. (Go on and grin, you damn preppies. You&amp;amp;#x2019;re not immune! You will die, too. Just like a Canadian dog.)\n\nI cannot tell you how many Sundays I passed enjoying these comforting rituals before I stopped reading newspapers for good. (They were getting into my head.) And always, it was the third\u2014the Wedding Pages\u2014I enjoyed the most.\n\nI was poor then, having moved to New York with nothing but a degree in literary theory and firm convictions that life owed me a living. I ended up with a job tearing out pages from one book and taping them into another all day, and then retiring to my girlfriend&amp;amp;#x2019;s apartment, which was very small. It was basically a sink and a bad fridge with some floorboards around them holding up some cast-off furniture and a C\u00E9zanne print.\n\nWe tried to make a life there, she, I, her roommate, the guy who was crashing on the sofa that had no legs, and the various friends we would invite over for our sad, ridiculously ambitious nine-course weekend dinners in which we would cook a gigantic turkey and attempt to carve it with the only unused butter knife.\n\nIt was around that time of fright and yearning that my girlfriend first introduced me to the Wedding Pages. Perhaps she was trying to drop a hint, but I took it differently. Here were people actually beginning adult lives instead of woefully faking it, as we were. They had planned well, majored in finance or better, and were at that very moment in the process of fulfilling the American dream: marrying into money.\n\nTheir parents, who sat on boards and foundations and/or oversaw arts centers in East Hampton, did not worry about them. They did not worry about anything.\n\nI was jealous at first. And then I felt something else. There is a German word, I trust, for the feeling they inspired in me, but I do not know what it is. Not schadenfraude. Not pleasure taken in another&amp;amp;#x2019;s unhappiness, but rather the relief I felt considering the unhappiness I imagined for these smiling couples\u2014that as time wore on, they would age as well, and suffer. This brief moment of newspaper glamour would fade, to be replaced by many more photos full of the same hope and self-congratulation and soft cable-knit sweaters. And this was hilarious to me, as I was young and cruel.\n\nNow I am older, and no longer quite as defensive and fearful. (I am on television.) Newspapers are disappearing. And also, I am married, and we never did get our picture in the paper for it. And I regret it.\n\nFor I look at the Wedding Pages differently now. Yes, they are as pompous as they are banal. These are but two keys to the Gordian knot of comedy. But what I am now beginning to understand is how brave these people are.\n\nA wedding announcement is a window into the most goofball daydream a couple can have about itself. To write out your own romance novel, even in glorified newspaper prose, and give it to the world to see is incredibly, ridiculously courageous. It might as well be accompanied by every picture of a horse the bride ever drew in grade school, and every D&amp;amp;D character the groom ever rolled. It is as foolhardy and beautiful as, well, actually getting married.\n\nWedding announcements are little human stories, full of want and hope, even when they involve falconry. I root for these couples the way I root for all married couples now, and I do not want them to die. I want them to be immortal, Dagwood-style, caught in that frozen moment of hope forever, smiling like morons, happy.\n\nThat is all.\n\nExcerpted from the foreword of Weddings of the Times: A Parody. Foreword by John Hodgman and Weddings of the Times by Dan Klein, Robert Baedeker, John Reichmuth, and James Reichmuth. Copyright &amp;amp;#xA9; 2009 by the authors and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin&amp;amp;#x2019;s Press, LLC."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/john-hodgman-reads-the-wedding-announcements>